Fifty Shades of Grey is not a good book. The story essentially boils down to two boring people engaged in a boring contract negotiation, punctuated by seemingly endless rounds of shower/bathtub sex and a few light spankings. It's really very, very dull stuff.

On Thursday night, the eight most masochistic members of the Jezebel staff attended the same screening of the endlessly harped-upon film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. All eight of us lived to tell the tale. In fact, to our collective pleasant surprise, it wasn't even really that bad.

1. I've never read the book Fifty Shades of Grey, but I'm fairly certain this film is the best possible adaptation of the material. From the looks of it, the 2011 erotica sensation seems not only to lack any semblance of a story, but even the backbone of one—as if author E.L. James never really thought to include…